Flåm or Stavanger?

Neither place is a beach destination, but Stavanger at least has real sand. The Jæren coast south of the city has long dune-backed beaches such as Sola and Orre, good for a windy walk and popular with surfers when the swell comes in.

Flåm's shore is shingle, rock and quayside. The fjord water is chilled by snowmelt, so swimming there means a brief plunge off the rocks, usually after a sauna.

Stavanger is clearly the better place to eat. It has a serious fine-dining tier built on Ryfylke lamb, North Sea fish and Jæren produce, plus fish soup and shrimp by the harbour and the Gladmat festival on the quays each summer. It thins out below the top level, but there is still real choice.

In Flåm, meals come from a handful of hotel dining rooms, cafés serving day visitors and a brewery pub with smoked and grilled dishes. Undredal goat cheese and fjord salmon are the local touches. Otherwise you eat to refuel.

Stavanger has far more to see. Gamle Stavanger is one of the finest wooden quarters in northern Europe, and the cathedral has kept its 12th-century character. The Petroleum Museum, the Canning Museum and the bronze swords at Hafrsfjord tell the story of the place from the Vikings to the oil age.

Flåm's sights take a morning: the small railway museum and the painted wooden church of 1670 up the valley. The region's stave churches are outings, not things in the village.

Stavanger has a real if modest night out. Øvre Holmegate's painted lane of small bars and the pubs along Vågen fill up on Friday and Saturday, and a few clubs stay open into the small hours. Weeknights are quiet.

Flåm has none of this. A beer at the brewery pub or a hotel bar and a walk by the water under the summer light is the whole evening.

Both are in superb fjord country, and Flåm has the edge because the scenery starts at the door. The UNESCO-listed Nærøyfjord, the Stegastein viewpoint, the railway climb to Myrdal, Aurlandsdalen and the Rallarvegen are all close, and many of them start from the village. On foot, by bike, by kayak or by train, you are in the landscape within minutes.

Stavanger's big sights, the Lysefjord, Preikestolen and the harder Kjerag, are an hour or more away by road or boat. It adds things Flåm lacks, though: the open dune coast of Jæren, the easy Dalsnuten summit and island-hopping in sheltered Ryfylke.

Flåm has the slightly stronger list of outings, mainly because of the Borgund stave church and the old wooden lanes of Lærdalsøyri through the tunnel. Tiny Undredal, the Viking village at Gudvangen and the lakeside town of Voss make other easy days.

Stavanger's best non-landscape trips are Utstein Abbey, the white town of Egersund and the Viking farm at Avaldsnes. The last of these takes most of a day. The quiet Ryfylke islands are more for wandering than for sightseeing.

Stavanger is much easier with children. It has a children's museum, a playground made from oil equipment at the Petroleum Museum, a hands-on science centre in Sandnes for wet days, the Kongeparken amusement park and sandy Jæren beaches.

Flåm's railway, fjord boats and the Viking village at Gudvangen thrill children, but there is nothing built for them beyond that. Toddlers will struggle on the long walks.

Both are easy on foot. You can cross Flåm in ten minutes and Stavanger's centre in a quarter of an hour. The difference is in how you reach the surrounding country.

In Flåm, the railway, the fjord boats and the buses to Gudvangen and Voss are part of the sightseeing, and many visitors manage without a car, though off-season timetables need planning. Stavanger has city buses, a coastal train and fast boats, but Kjerag, the outer beaches and the fjord side mostly call for a hire car.

Flåm's shops are there for people stepping off the train and the cruise ships. A short run of souvenir stores by the station and harbour puts trolls alongside the sweaters, and there is nothing to browse beyond that.

Stavanger is a small city with real shopping streets. Norwegian chains line the pedestrian streets near the cathedral, and the painted lanes around Øvre Holmegate add a few independent and design shops, so a wet afternoon there can go on browsing. Both places are good for the same buys, Norwegian wool knitwear and outdoor gear, but Stavanger gives you far more to choose from.

Both are among the costliest places a traveller can choose, and neither has a real budget option. Flåm's few rooms fill up in summer, and the railway and boat trips add up, so cabins, the campsite and the village supermarket are your main ways to save.

Stavanger is just as dear for meals, drinks and cruises. Its business hotels sometimes drop their rates at weekends and in high summer, which gives a little more room to save on where you stay.

Here Stavanger is in a different league. The Konserthus at Bjergsted is an excellent hall with its own symphony orchestra, Rogaland Teater stages drama, and MaiJazz and a late-summer chamber-music festival add to the year. In Flåm you might hear a musician in the pub on a summer night, and that is all.

Both offer the Nordic sauna-and-cold-plunge routine rather than a spa culture, but the mood is different. Flåm's calm is the silence of a fjord-head village once the day visitors leave, with a floating sauna right on the water.

Stavanger's is a city's slower pace: public saunas around the harbour and Gamlingen, the heated outdoor pool locals use in all weathers.